The Vampire Diaries: The World Has Turned and Left Me Here Recap

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The Vampire Diaries: The World Has Turned and Left Me Here Recap (6×05)

Synopsis: The Whitmore gang celebrates homecoming before Tyler gets into a massive car accident which critically injures the students at the party. While Elena and the others rush to save lives and prevent Tyler from turning into a werewolf, Stefan continues to be a manchild who avoids personal responsibility by entrusting Ivy to Caroline’s care. Meanwhile, Bonnie sends Damon back to This Side at the expense of her life.

Rating: ★★★★★

Does anyone ever stay dead in Mystic Falls? This week’s answer to that question: sorta. The Vampire Diaries makes a habit out of killing major characters and bringing a select few back to life. Repeatedly.

Occasionally the characters do stay dead, but there are only so many times you can yo-yo and audience back and forth emotionally before we all end up nauseous and apathetic. There are no stakes when there are no consequences, and The Vampire Diaries is very selective about which characters suffer the consequences.

This week we finally resolve the two plot lines between This Side and The Other Side, which hopefully translates into Stefan being less of a selfish nose-wipe that he has been for the past four episodes.

Elena invites questionably cute intern Liam with her to the Homecoming/Halloween inspired event-of-the-week. They’re going to be frolicking in a corn maze, and it’s now going to be a litmus test for anyone who wants to date me whether or not they also take satellite images of the maze beforehand and completely spoil the fun.

Anyway, Ivy’s back from the dead and bothering Stefan to teach her about being a vampire. Stefan absolves himself of all personal responsibility (and no one was surprised) by bringing Ivy to Caroline for babysitting.

Stefan then asks Alaric to wipe Ivy’s memory and give her a ‘clean start’ – which is to say, give Stefan a get-out-of-being-a-responsible-vampire-sire free card. Alaric refuses and calls Stefan out on his attitude.

In the meantime, Ivy quickly escapes Caroline and runs off to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting Mystic Falls-approximate population, feeding off a man and letting him escape without wiping his memory. Ivy’s victim runs straight into the road only to be hit by Tyler’s truck, which in turn careens off the road and into the heart of the corn maze. She ends up getting caught by hunter Tripp at the end of the episode.

With potential casualties everywhere, Tyler’s freaking out about reactivating his werewolf gene by causing someone’s death. Elena and Liam clean up the mess as best they can, Elena with her vampire blood and Liam with his Nancy Drew-like knowledge of on-the-fly tracheotomies.
They manage to save everyone except Ivy’s initial victim, who Liv mercy kills herself to save Tyler.

Liam’s suspicious of Elena’s ability to save people on the brink of death, but she quickly smooths that over with a smooch and a speech on how Liam was an absolute hero. I’m sure Damon would appreciate that.

Ric and The Doctor also make eyes at each other this episode. That storyline ends with Ric trying to compel away her feelings for him- unsuccessfully. We’ll see where this goes. #PlotPoint

Finally, on The Other Side, Damon, Bonnie, and Kai are preparing to go back home. We learn that Kai doesn’t actually know the spell to get them out, so Bonnie plunges a pickaxe into his chest and leaves him for dead. Bonnie then activates The Ascendant relic and starts the spells to go home – and she almost manages it – just before Kai revives and shoots her with an arrow. Bonnie’s dying, but chooses to save Damon, sending him home and leaving her and Kai to languish and/or die in Purgatory.

The episode closes with Stefan and Damon’s reunion in the family crypt – and maybe I’m just paranoid, but there was this weird moment where I was almost sure Stefan was going to stake Damon before he went in for the hug. Anyway, seeing the fallout from memory-wiped Elena and Damon’s reunion should be fun next week! My bet is that stunt with Lady Doctor suggests that Alaric’s compulsion will end up being a bit more permanent than all parties intended.

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